An Education

You know you have taken too many road trips with two young kids when their Leapsters and personal DVD players no longer keep their attention AND you are peppered with questions and forced to explain in detail the subject of death (i.e. who is most likely to pass first, mommy or daddy? do we get a new dog if Casey dies?), divorce (i.e. why would a mommy and daddy not want to live together? who do the kids stay with? do they get two dogs?) and long division (i.e. how many tens go into 630?).

These topics consumed most of our three hour car ride last weekend while on the very straight and boring Appalachian Highway. Luckily, once we got to Kathy’s house in Athens, Ohio, our conversations were on a much lighter note (despite our hike around the old insane asylum and our experience at a campus “open doors” night).

And on the drive home the only stumper they threw my way was … “what do you do at school if there is a fire, tornado warning and a code red all at the same time?” For those that don’t know, a code red is when a “bad guy” may be outside the school building and you should lock the doors, draw the shades, hover in the corner and curse those kids from Columbine for starting the trend of psychos randomly attacking institutions of public and private education.

So I may be sensing some slight anxiety in my kids (which now has transferred to me), but hoping in the long run it is just curiosity or the boredom that comes with sitting in the back seat of a car with nothing else to do. In any case, they got quite an education on their first trip to Ohio University.

Click here to see pictures from Athens 2011.